Political action is not the road to effective change. The way to really change society is to start with yourself, your own groups, your own businesses and work your way out. The further away from your self you get, the less of a chance you have of changing anything.

Recorded on 2012-10-17

Today I see news releases in which B. H. Obama is bragging about “fixing” medicare. Looks like little more than window dressing to me. Many doctors are dropping medicare patients because they don’t make any money and it’s just not worth the paperwork and effort to comply with the regulations. So much for “affordable health care for all.”

When the government socializes services and then makes big promises, there is a good chance they won’t deliver on those promises when hard times are here. These cuts and the subsequent bragging about “eliminating waste” are just another example of this.

Obama, like most politicians, is a highly paid professional shill. He lied his way into office and he used his lies to crack open the treasury and rob the future generations of their freedom and prosperity. How about we get these leftist hacks out of office and put people in who give a damn about our inalienable Constitutional rights.

You can’t create new “rights” like the “right to health care” which violate existing basic human rights like property rights; because in order for the government to hand out services for free, they must take something from someone else.

What you end up with, after all of this welfare, is crappy health care for everyone, more poverty and a much more difficult life for future generations.

Doctors’ Medicare payouts to be cut 21% June 1

CNN Money | May 17, 2010

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — For the fourth time this year, doctors face a potential huge cut in the fees that the government pays them to treat Medicare patients.

Physicians will be hit with a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements as of June 1, unless lawmakers decide to patch over the issue — as they’ve done for years. Congress is now debating the matter, and to stop the cut lawmakers would have to vote to pass a new patch sometime in the next two weeks.

If the proposed cuts go through, physicians are worried their practices will be so strapped that they’ll have to drop some of the 43 million Americans who are covered under Medicare.

But, of course, on the other side of the issue is cost to the government at a time when the federal budget is tight.

Federal law currently requires that the payment rates for doctors who accept Medicare be adjusted annually based on a formula that’s tied to the health of the economy.

“The current formula is absolutely broken,” said James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association. “Congress is in a hole, and instead of climbing out they keep digging deeper.”

That formula was established in 1997, and the law says rates should be cut every year to keep Medicare in the black.

But Congress has blocked those cuts in seven of the last eight years, setting up nine temporary patches often referred to as the “doc fix” — three of which were in 2010 alone.

“It’s hard to imagine this 21% cut actually being allowed to go through,” said Patricia Neuman, a vice president at the nonpartisan analysis group Kaiser Family Foundation. “A cut of this magnitude would have a chilling effect on physicians.”

‘Annual agony’

Of course, delaying cuts merely kicks an existing problem down the road.

“This annual agony must end,” said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a statement. “Postponing a permanent solution is false economy.”

One possible outcome of the congressional wrangling is a five-year delay in the 21% cut in Medicare fees. That option, the most-discussed so far, would cost about $80 billion.

That spending would be exempt from a “pay as you go” law enacted in February that requires lawmakers to find ways to offset certain spending increases or tax cuts.

Other options include delaying cuts by a fewer number of years, but at higher reimbursement rates, provided that the cost is capped at $80 billion.

But the AMA’s Rohack says he wants “a new formula that actually reflects the true cost of care.” Lawmakers counter that repealing the current setup would cost $210 billion over 10 years.

The massive cost of retooling Medicare is the reason such a measure wasn’t included in the new health care reform law.

“Like so many things, this is a fiscal issue — it all gets down to money,” Neuman said. “There’s a lot of interest in changing the formula, but it’s not so straightforward, especially from a budgetary point of view.”

The AMA is pushing for a total Medicare overhaul because the years of temporary patches have created uncertainty for physicians and consumers alike, Rohack said.

“There will be letters saying, ‘Dear Mrs. Jones, I’m closing my practice because I can’t afford it anymore,’ ” Rohack said. “I’m worried they won’t even be able to recommend other physicians because no one else in the community is accepting Medicare either.”

A permanent fix would remove physician uncertainty, restore consumer faith and ultimately save money, Rohack said, adding that a permanent fix in 2007 would have cost just $49 billion.

“If they’d fixed this permanently years ago, it would have been a tadpole-sized problem,” Rohack said. “Now, it’s become a bullfrog — and eventually it’ll be Jabba the Hutt.”

Here is an interesting interview in which Congressman Ron Paul is asked about his notion that healthcare, as well as other goods and services are not rights. He explains this in detail and shows that making goods and services “rights” violates the rights of others; because the government has to take from somebody else in order to hand out goods and services to people who don’t have them. Taking of goods and services from one person to give to another is not the hallmark of a free society.

RT: “You’ve said before that you feel that healthcare is not a right. Can you justify that?”

Ron Paul: “I think very easily: you have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty and you ought to have a right to keep what you earn in a free country; but you don’t have a right to ‘stuff’. You don’t have a right to services or things like a house or a job; because, in order to get that, the government would have to take it from somebody else.

If somebody claims you have the right to a car and they don’t have one and the government gives them a car; they have to take the money or the car from someone else, so it’s a contradiction in terms. If somebody claims that they have a right to something; they have to violate somebody else’s right.

So the most you can expect in a free society is for the government to make an attempt at protecting rights, not to try to redistribute wealth; if you do that, all people lose their rights.”

Ron Paul: “…What I’ve tried to do in the past is offer something that would replace government programs; because there’s lots of ways you can deliver services and good other than through government mandates and government spending; because inevitably that fails…”

I would like to thank the leftists for giving us all “universal” health care.  Basically services that we are going to be forced to buy, else pay a penalty on our IRS tax return.  I haven’t even been to an allopathic “doctor” for my health in about 10 years; so despite the fact that I might not want to take part in that system at all someday, these extortionists are going to force me to have insurance; and not just any insurance, the insurance that the government says is okay.

The way a republic like ours is supposed to function is: you are allowed to do whatever you please, so long as it doesn’t violate the inalienable rights of another individual.  The government is supposed to exist in order to protect those inalienable rights as their soul function.  The people of a nation are supposed to keep their government in line by demanding that those rights be protected above all else.

This healthcare bill infringes on my rights to choose where and how my money is spent and how I manage my health.  What if I decide I don’t want insurance someday down the line?  Let’s say I’m a self-employed health conscious individual who only needs coverage in the event I get hit by a truck and have to get put back together.  I might want a health savings account and a high deductible policy; but the government must first approve any selection or I will be forced to pay penalties out of my salary.

Look, if you can’t get affordable health coverage, I’m sorry; but you need to realize that the government involvement in the health care system is a great deal of why it is so expensive already.  Around half of all of the money spent on healthcare comes from the government; this drives up the prices for everyone.   Its the same with education and all of the government money pumped into that system on a continuous basis.

If you don’t really understand the deeper effects of how markets work; then I can see how it looks like a good idea.  You think that the so-called “free market” doesn’t work for health care; but you don’t realize that we don’t really have much of a free market here; the government has all but taken over the system and look what the results where.  What we’re looking at is a problem that government helped create and more government control is not going to magically solve it.

Personally, I am covered by an insurance plan via my employer; but I rarely use it for myself.  I can accomplish most of my health care with diet, nutrition, exercise, herbs and an inquisitive mind.  I don’t want your health care and I do everything in my power to not need it.

There are a great many people who need the health care, primarily because they are mostly unaware of their unhealthy lifestyle habits.  I’m sorry to say it; but if you drink soda and eat processed junk all day you are going to have health problems; I don’t see why it should be my responsibility to bail you out when you are made to face the consequences of bad decisions.

One thing that we have to realize as a collective is that there needs to be risk.  Risk motivates people to be more aware; because they know they must avert that risk.  People are always calling on the government to protect us from risk by spreading that risk out over the collective; but all this really does is make us a weaker society because people make worse decisions when they don’t have to be concerned with risk.  It also penalizes productivity because a fair chunk of society freeloads on the back of the socialized risk machine without contributing meaningfully.

We need to make some drastic changes in the direction our society is going.  Less health freedoms are not going to make us any healthier; it will just encourage people to be lazy and freeload on the system.  It will also limit the options of people who are mindful and want to use alternative treatments; because being extorted into paying for “care” lessens the amount of money for alternative treatments.

At the dawn of America’s independence, her newly formed government was populated with reluctant leaders; statesmen in the truest sense of the word.  Whereas in today’s world, such statesmanship is practically an anathema; for those who do exhibit statesmen-like principle are often ridiculed, for their strict opposition to the unprincipled, morally bankrupt, tactics of today’s political movements.

The Hypocrisy of the Ruling Party

“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

– Thomas Jefferson

In contemporary American society, there is a considerable hubris and hypocrisy, exhibited by the ruling party and supporters of this party; whether it be Republican or Democrat.  Both parties claim to be adherents of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, yet both parties unapologetically denigrate these foundational principles at virtually every opportunity.

It is as if the principles of equal protection under the law, upon which our republic was founded, have been discarded in favor of a democracy in which favored groups are rewarded using protection rackets and money powers to govern.

American society is ever becoming like many ancient societies, where the national government becomes the centerpiece of everyone’s lives.  They use bread and circuses to keep the people occupied, such that they do not object to the gradual takeover and subjugation of an individual’s right to self-determination.

Some-day in the near future, it may be virtually impossible to make a decent living in America, without working directly for the government or as a contractor of the government.  This merging of the corporations with the government is the very definition of Industrial Fascism.

The Immorality of Unconstitutional Spending

“This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.” — Thomas Jefferson

If you consider the extent to which we are taxed and scrutinized, as well as the legal definition of Citizen of the United States, then we are already employees of United States; because in legalese the term Citizen is held to mean Employee. This is how the government gets away with the so-called Income Tax, despite the fact that direct un-apportioned taxes are expressly forbidden in the Constitution. In fact many Americans are already working 3+ months out of the year to pay for the taxes they are compelled to pay by the government. Read the rest of this entry »